Chick Corea is in Australia:Chick Corea and Gary Burtonappear at Melbourne International Jazz Festival on June 8 in Hamer Hall at the Arts CentreSydney Opera House Concert Hall, Tues June 10Brisbane: QPAC Concert Hall, Wed June 11

Transcript

Andrew Ford: Well that was 'Crystal Silence' from Chick Corea and Gary Burton's concert in Zurich on 28 October 1979, and it's a pleasure to be sitting here in this tiny little dressing room with Chick Corea. Welcome to The Music Show.

Chick Corea: Yes, thank you man, great pleasure to be here.

Andrew Ford: That collaboration with Gary Burton, obviously you're here with Gary Burton, it's 35 years since you began, since the album Crystal Silence came out? Such an attractive combination of sounds, piano and vibes. Was that where it started, with the alchemical possibility of putting those two keyboard instruments together?

Chick Corea: Actually, it wasn't so much a thought of putting the instruments together as it was that Gary and I as musicians kind of hit it off, and it was kind of an unusual thing back in '71 where a jazz pianist and a jazz vibraphonist played without bass and drums. And it began with a solo concert that Gary and I were both soloists at.

There was a concert, I believe it was in Berlin, and there were about six different soloists: John McLaughlin played a guitar solo, Gary played a vibraphone solo, I played piano solo. I remember an unusual set where Albert Mangelsdorff played a trombone solo, just all alone on the stage, trombone, and it was an unusual thing to do, and it went off very, very well. The audience really liked it, and so at the end of the show the audience was applauding for an encore, and all of us were standing back there and looking at each other like duh, what shall we do now? So Gary's vibes were out there, he was standing next to me, and I said, 'You want to try this tune I have that's just a simple vamp you know, and we can improvise on it?'

So we played 'La Fiesta', and just kind of improvised on the vamp part. And it was wonderful, it kind of clicked and from there we were asked by the producer of ECM Records, Manfred Eicher, who happened to be at the concert, if we'd like to do a duet record. So we just played an encore, we didn't think anything of it, it was kind of fun, and that was that. But we had this offer to do a recording and we thought, Well, why not? And we put 'Crystal Silence' together and then from there, we enjoyed it so much we just continued to play together.

Andrew Ford: That Manfred Eicher is responsible for an awful lot of musical projects that have continued.

Chick Corea: Yes, he has very, very good taste.

Andrew Ford: Yes. I mean it's difficult, isn't it, piano and vibes playing together, you've got to hit at the same moment, it's not like vibes playing with bass for instance, or you playing with a sax player where you get a certain leeway. You don't have to be absolutely pinpoint accurate, but you do really don't you, when you've got two keyboard players?

Chick Corea: Well I don't know. We have different approaches. We have some approaches where we strike the notes exactly together and then other approaches where purposely we don't. And it creates all kinds of different sounds and textures.

Andrew Ford: Because it is 35 years now; listening to the original album, the communication between you is astonishing, but 35 years later, I imagine it's better, is it?

Chick Corea: Well that's what has kept us continuing to play together, because the performances and the playing together has been a joy to do, and it has improved, I think, during the years, it's gotten better, and we've extended our limits as far as what kind of music we do and what kind of areas or improvisation we try out, and so we're continuing to expand our horizons as well, and this orchestral project is yet another step in trying to do something with a different sound.

Andrew Ford: Well up here on stage at the Perth Concert Hall, you're going to be doing 'Crystal Silence' with an orchestra behind you. What difference does that make?

Chick Corea: Every difference in the world, it's the difference between two people playing and 82 people playing. It's a really big stretch and a big experiment, and here in Perth will be the first time we've actually tried this music out actually. The music is newly arranged. I sort of got together with a favourite musician of mine, Tim Garland, who's a wonderful young saxophonist, who was in my band for some years, but it turns out through the years he's developed into a brilliant composer and orchestrator, and he's made a couple of recordings actually that are incredible, of his own music. But I chose him as an orchestrator to help me do these arrangements, and so I sat down with Tim and we talked over the way we would like each piece to go, but essentially Tim did the arrangements, and I listened to them and gave a few comments. So this rehearsal that we just finished just this moment, was the first time we heard any of it, and I think it's going to be very nice.

Andrew Ford: Well it sounds nice, and you obviously get flashes of colour, you know tambourines in 'La Fiesta' and so on, but there's a loss of intimacy, inevitably, there's 82 of you instead of two of you. Are there other advantages besides the odd flash of colour? There must be.

Chick Corea: Well to play with an orchestra can be very exciting, and the orchestra and the sound of an orchestra is quite an institution in music now. And of course the thing that will keep that institution alive is the brilliance of the music. And of course there's nothing like hearing a wonderful orchestra play. So we're going to try to create as much intimacy with these arrangements in the short, very short amount of time we have to prepare them. It's always the problem, which is not having enough time to develop new music. Even with a duet or a group of mine now sometimes spend days and days and sometimes weeks and endless hours developing a new piece of music or a new performance. But with the orchestra, because of the economics of the situation, we usually don't have enough time. So the arrangements are written to try to accommodate that, but we'll see. I think that so far it's sounding very good, and I like the orchestra very much.

Andrew Ford: Maybe we could do a little history, Chick; we've talked about 'Crystal Silence' in 1972; that was an astonishing four or five years, it seems to me, just looking over the albums that came out there. Obviously there's 'In a Silent Way' and 'Bitches Brew' that you did with Miles Davis in the late '60s, 1970, does this circle with Dave Holland and Anthony Bracks...

Chick Corea: Yes, that followed 'Bitches Brew'.

Andrew Ford: And 'Crystal Silence' in 1972 which is the year after Circle, it's the same year as Return to Forever, which includes actually 'Crystal Silence' as well. And let's not forget the piano improvisations which were there as well. Four years, and each one of those now seems like an important -- not sparing your blushes here -- an important moment in jazz history, and yet all incredibly different from each other.

Chick Corea: Well it was an interesting time for me and for the music scene, the world in general, but for me it was a time of great discovery and personal discovery as well, and great change of mind, and in the music scene in New York, and amongst the musicians I was working with, it was the time of experimentation that was -- the scene of which was set by some of our heroes, like Miles, like you mentioned, with his musical ventures, like Coltrane, like Ornette Coleman, like a lot of musicians during that period were trying things. Like many of the musicians that came out of Miles's band had wild things going on after they left the band. Herbie Hancock formed -- made a certain kind of music; Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter went out and formed Weather Report. I did my experiments and ended up with a couple of versions of Return to Forever. John McLaughlin who had played with me in Miles's band, had Mahavishnu Orchestra. Tony Williams then went and formed Lifetime with John McLaughlin and Larry Young and it was a time of search and trial, and it was quite exciting times.

Andrew Ford: And it would have been possible for people, different people, to discover Chick Corea in those years, via Crystal Silence or Return to Forever, or Circle, of the piano improvisations and for them each to believe they'd discovered a different Chick Corea, but it didn't feel like that to you, presumably?

Chick Corea: Well I'm not the listener, so I'm, on the other end of the line of just being in this mode of trying to create something, and trying things out and experimenting with my partners.

Andrew Ford: I suppose what I'm edging towards asking you is about style, because these albums that we're talking about, seem to be in broadly different styles, but is that something you think about?

Chick Corea: Well I want to say something about that because in actual fact the way it looks like to me is that the whole idea of style, how someone does something, or how a musician sounds, it's a red herring, it's something that if you try to learn something from it, you won't. It's the wrong thing to go down, because style is always the result of the idea, and the experiment itself. So what results in a band for instance like Return to Forever the first Return to Forever with Airto Moreira on drums, and Flora Purim singing and Stanley Clark on the acoustic bass, then later the electric bass, and Joe Farrell on the flute and soprano, was not a style that was thought about at all, it was a feeling of music and a certain expression in communication and atmosphere that was intended to get across to an audience and to have amongst the musicians themselves, which resulted in choices like well I think I'm going to use the Fender Rhodes piano for this, and gee, Joe, why don't you play the flute in this part, the flute sounds really nice with the Fender Rhodes, let's do that, and Stanley, instead of you playing electric bass on that piece, why don't you play acoustic bass on that piece? That will give it a different sound. And Airto, would you please play that sombre beat that I like so much on this piece?

And things like that finally resulted, endless things like that, like just endless details and endless evolution of what we were doing. Finally ended up in the sounds that you hear. And then you listen to it when it's all done, especially what was it, 35 years later, and you start to want to give it names, like Well what style is that? But the musicians never think about style.

Andrew Ford: So it's the sum of the musicians' experience at any given moment? I mean if you have Airto Moreira in a band, you're going to get one sort of thing. If you have Anthony Braxton, you're going to get something else, aren't you?

Chick Corea: That's a major factor and as a matter of fact the musicians that I've worked with throughout my life, especially, well, all of the musicians but especially the ones who have come in my bands and played my music, like compositions of mine, the major factor of the sounds that were produced, because I particularly like the philosophy and approach of working with musicians and having them contribute their own creation and feeling into the music, it's not dictated like we'll play this, or we'll play this, it's not a stream of instructions. And that's what made Miles Davis' band so rich, and a lot of the great bands that I loved from that period and still love even the younger bands and any bands, to me that's a hallmark of great music is where the individual musicians in the group are all creating as individuals.

Andrew Ford: Herbie Hancock was on the show last week, and of course we talked about Miles Davis then, and I asked him why he thought Miles Davis had picked him, and I could ask you the same question, but maybe Chick Corea the question could be turned around and maybe I can ask you what you think you brought to Miles Davis's band at the time?

Chick Corea: Well...

Andrew Ford: In the spirit of what you've just been saying.

Chick Corea: Well the general answer would be that I brought myself and whatever my own responses were to the directions that he gave. That's generally from my viewpoint. Other than that, you'd have to ask Miles which you can't do right now or any of the other musicians or even listeners and fans, what they thought anyone brought to the band. But I brought myself and my, I think the main thing I contributed to Miles's band, was an intense curiosity and interest and passion to want to support him and play music and create music with him. I had followed Miles's music since literally 1948 or 9, where my father had 78 rpm vinyl recordings of Miles playing with Charlie Parker on Dial Records with the yellow label, and I remember the smell of the vinyl. All the way through all of Miles's solo records, starting from 1951 on, until 1968 which is when I joined his band. So for me it was like one of the greatest things that could happen to me in my life was playing with him. So that's what I brought to the band, is all of that enthusiasm.

Andrew Ford: Finally, I have to ask you about playing with Mozart, who also isn't around to ask, but what does that do for you?

Chick Corea: Well Mozart is a little bit like playing with Miles, except he wasn't there in person but you know, a great part of Mozart was there when I played with him, which was his score and his original idea that he put down the notes, and that was attractive to me. You know I have this wonderful experience that when I look at a score of music from another composer and I get into it, I can sort of not only imagine, but feel like I've understood that moment when that composer was writing those notes. I can sort of put myself into his head, and go 'Oh, look, he wrote that, and he wrote that, and then, I see, he was...' and I sort of try to get how he was looking at life by the notes he was writing, and that's how I get to know composers and that's how I got to be very enamoured of Mozart's music.

Andrew Ford: And your own relationship with notation? When do you notate and when do you not notate? What are the things you feel have to be notated?

Chick Corea: Well notation is -- the only purpose of it is to communicate ideas to other musicians. If I never had to write a note down in order to make great music I wouldn't, because it's just a mechanical thing, but sometimes it facilitates getting ideas across, and other musicians who are literate enough to see what music is through its notation, which are many these days, more and more actually, even the young musicians seem to be understanding how to read music. Then for that reason then I'll notate. But the big, big thing about music notation, written music, is that even thoroughly written music like the great classical composers like Mozart and so forth, they're only guides, that's all they are, they're indications and guides and nothing happens until the performer takes those notes and does something with them. So that's all the notes are and in improvised music you don't need to write so much stuff down.

Andrew Ford: Chick Corea, it's been a pleasure to meet you, thanks for coming on The Music Show.

Chick Corea: Oh sure, and lots of success with your show and it's wonderful to be here.

Credits

Presenter

Andrew Ford

Producer

Penny Lomax / Maureen Cooney

Saturday 10am and Special features Sunday 11amRepeated: Saturday and Sunday 10pm